C. sapidus

Calabaza guisada al chipotle: Browned cubes of pork shoulder and fried onions braised with cubed pumpkin, roasted tomatoes, chicken stock, and roasted tomatillo-chipotle salsa. We used pumpkin wedges from the Latino market. Served with arroz blanco and our usual sliced cucumbers. I’m a big fan of pork and pumpkin. Recipe from Rick Bayless’ Mexican Kitchen. Not sure why my pictures are showing up so small.

Gorgeous meals, all. It is nice to be able to post pictures again after a computer crash. Oven-baked spicy chicken (bhooni murg), a simple recipe from The Indian Spice Kitchen. Chicken drumsticks were briefly marinated in a paste of cayenne, turmeric, allspice, garam masala, garlic, ginger, and lemon juice. The chicken was wrapped in foil, baked, and then unwrapped and broiled to crisp the skin. The process yielded tender, juicy chicken with a spicy crust. Pilaf-style basmati rice with onion, cloves, cardamom, garam masala, chicken stock, and peas. High scores from the boys, as usually happens when we have a late dinner, hunger being the best pickle and all.

Lies! Lies, I say! Holy crap this was spicy. When you throw 2 oz (over 50 grams!) of dried chiles and a tablespoon of sichuan peppercorns into a hot wok it's like getting hit with pepper spray. And that heat does NOT stay in the chiles, contrary to Dunlop's assertion in the writeup. No, this dish was insanely spicy, no two ways about it. The taste was fabulous, but this is definitely not designed for the western palate. I can't make it with this level of chiles again: maybe a quarter as many would be more reasonable. This is one of our family's favorites, so I am sorry it did not work out for you. You may want to try again with milder chiles - we use an un-named red chile from the Indian market that has a nice mix of flavor and heat. And, as Nakji says, this stuff is designed to be eaten with lots of rice.

Smacked cucumber, perhaps? If I recall, Fuchsia Dunlop has a recipe for this in one of her books.

Creamy soft-scrambled eggs with chorizo, onion, tomato salsa, and serrano chiles, served on warm corn tortillas.

Donna, that stew sounds delicious. The panel of judges were unimpressed. They liked the peas and sauce, but the scallops and mushrooms were judged "too mushy". Perfectly cooked scallops, imo, but de gustibus non disputandum est, as they say. I should have dry-fried the mushrooms, which firms them up and usually goes over well with the critics. A late dinner tonight with no boys. I made spaghetti aio e oio, and Mrs. C made salad dressing to go with green salad. Mixing the garlicky oil with the salad dressing was particularly enjoyable. Vampires beware!

Yay, a whole bunch of dinners from Ann_T! The ribs and brownies are particularly eye-catching. Unusual dinner tonight - curried bay scallops with shiitake mushrooms a la Julia Child. Fascinating to see French techniques (multiple browning and deglazing, thickening with browned flour) and ingredients (dry vermouth, thyme, and sour cream ), combined with a sorta-Indian recipe. Quite tasty, although folks in India can rest easy. Served with buttered peas with parsley, and a baguette for sopping up the sauce. I'm really looking forward to uploading pictures again.

Pierogi, thanks for the chiles rellenos tips! kalypso, basting with hot oil sounds like a great idea – similar to frying whole fish in a wok. No chiles rellenos for us last night . . . Tinga de pollo y papas: Simmer chicken thighs in tomato-chipotle salsa, cool, and then remove meat from the bone and shred. In a separate pan, brown sliced white onion with coarsely-shredded potatoes, and then stir in the sauce, shredded chicken, and Mexican oregano. Serve on warm corn tortillas with crumbled queso fresco, cubed avocado, and Tapatio salsa. Sides included fried plantains and the last of the pineapple.

Yum -- this sounds seriously delicious. Can you give a sense of the proportions? Was it mostly zukes and a little chorizo for flavoring? Or a more even mix? And was it really saucy? Or was the sauce basically just coating the veggies? Looking forward to giving it a try... Emily_R, thanks! Yes, mostly zucchini with chorizo for flavor. The basic proportions were 4 medium zucchini (3/8” dice) to a half-cup of chorizo, with one white onion and a cup of chipotle-tomato sauce. Leftovers made a lovely breakfast. Pierogi, I have yet to try making chiles rellenos, so kudos to you. Care to offer any tips for a first-timer?

Computer crashed, so no pictures but I will try to describe with words. Seared zucchini with roasted tomato, chipotle, and chorizo (Tinga de calabacitas): Cubed zucchini, fried until just tender and set aside. Fry chorizo with sliced white onion, add chipotle-tomato salsa and Mexican oregano, and simmer until the flavors meld. Add the zucchini, warm through, and serve with crumbled queso fresco, warm corn tortillas, and a little Tapatio salsa for kick. Quick cowboy beans (frijoles charros): Bacon, garlic, tomatoes, chopped chipotle chiles in adobo, and frijoles negros. The family strongly prefers frijoles negros over pintos. The boys gave the meal thumbs up, which was somewhat surprising given the preponderance of vegetable matter.

BeatriceB - good points, and welcome! When cooking for myself, I tend to shoot from the hip. When cooking for others I am far more likely to cook from a recipe, taking liberties as appropriate and necessary. The “problem” is that I love trying new dishes from many different cuisines. Repeating a dish seems like a missed opportunity to try something new and interesting, so except for a few favorites I rarely cook the same recipe twice in a year. This is a big change from my bachelor days, when I had a very small rotation of recipes that repeated every week or two. After a while, I stopped reading the recipes and my versions inevitably strayed from the original. This worked fine until I started cooking for more than one person, and discovered the difficulty in scaling up from a-glug-of-this-and-handful-of-that. Some of my improvised recipes have been lost forever.

I had nothing to do with dinner tonight. Mrs. C slow-cooked a pork butt in the crock pot, pulled the pork, and tossed the pork with a delicious, homemade, tangy-mustardy BBQ sauce. Bean salad, green salad, and raw vegetables rounded out the meal.

Yes, I made the mistake of cooking my first mole (many years ago) the day before checking out of my apartment. It looked like a particularly brutal murder had taken place at the stove, so I had to do some serious scrubbing to get my security deposit back. In my somewhat limited experience, moles are more flavorful than spicy. I recall being similarly surprised the first time I made one. Moles do take a fair amount of salt to really draw out their full flavor, though, as I have learned the hard way. Semi-scrambled sounds about right. That sauce is delicious, isn't it? Chile pasilla is one of my favorite flavors, ever. Looks like a great meal, and I would love to try some of that pineapple cake!

Absolutely! I am so glad that you liked the potatoes. I usually feel uneasy about recommending a recipe – what if it goes horribly wrong? Anyway, Art of Mexican Cooking was one of my first cookbooks, so my note may have dated back to when I first started cooking and had no idea how to adjust seasoning and such. I will definitely give it another go.

Thank you, Kalypso. We will set out an extra plate, just in case.

Consider luck sent your way. We made the potatoes with tomatoes a long time ago – my notes say “not bad”, which is faint praise. We did use a similar sauce for the last two meals and quite enjoyed it, so I will be very interested to see how it works for you. Thin the sauce with chicken stock if it seems too thick and starts to stick or burn. So, out of the billion or so people in China, how many others do you think will be cooking a Mexican feast tonight?

Lots of people professing a love of Mexican food in Favorite ethnic/regional cuisine not your own (clicky) , so let’s see some! I’ll start: Jalapeno beef tips with mushrooms, adapted from Rick Bayless’ Mexican Kitchen. We seared beef sirloin cubes, and then simmered the beef with salsa de jitomate cocida, thinned with chicken stock and seasoned with Mexican oregano and cilantro. The mushrooms were dry-fried before adding to the sauce. Served with our usual arroz blanco (white onion, garlic, cilantro, and chicken stock), raw cucumbers, and some fairly decent winter tomatoes.

robirdstx, those shrimp look delicious! Baked fish fillets with salsa de jitomate cocida, from Rick Bayless’ Mexican Kitchen. Probably more Mexican-style than Mexican, but easy and full of flavor. I made a batch of the sauce last weekend and reserved some for tomorrow’s dinner. Quick cowboy beans (frijoles charros), from Mexican Everyday. Pinto beans, bacon, garlic, pickled jalapenos, tomatoes, and cilantro. Turned out nicely, but I prefer this with black beans rather than pinto beans. Mrs. C made a baby romaine, broccoli slaw, and strawberry salad with a dressing of fig balsamic vinegar and pomegranate molasses.

The lily bulbs that I have seen (through gardening rather than cooking) are more segmented, like a head of garlic. I know, you want to know what your bulbs are, rather than what they aren't. Re Diana Kennedy: I grabbed my well-worn Art of Mexican Cooking to see where the pages fell open. Bricklayer’s eggs (huevos al albanil) are a revelation. The recipe tolerates chile substitutions pretty well, although the sauce is best with pasilla chiles in the mix. Potatoes fried with chile sauce (papas chirrionas) are also wonderful if you can find tomatillos. If you can spare a few hours and can find raw pumpkin seeds or something similar, chicken in red country mole (pollo en mole rojo sencillo) is delightful and relatively simple for a mole. Ms. Kennedy also blesses using the sauce with pork loin, although I think it would be killer (if apparently non-traditional) with slow-cooked cubes of pork butt.

A ginger chicken-obsessed friend was visiting from Japan, so we made a version of her favorite from Pleasures of the Vietnamese Table. We served the chicken with coconut rice and a vegetable stir-fry from Hot, Sour, Salty, Sweet - Napa cabbage, snow peas, and mushrooms, seasoned with smashed garlic, fish sauce, and fermented soybean paste. Garlic, onions, chiles, fish sauce, palm sugar, caramel sauce, chicken stock, scallions, cilantro, and lots of ginger imparted a lovely, complex flavor to the chicken. No pictures because everything disappeared, even the three cups of rice. Dang hungry teenagers!

Thanks for linking that recipe, prasantrin. I look forward to trying it next time we have a little extra ground pork. I think my favorite omelets are a sort of hybrid - a French-style folded omelet with almost-runny insides, but overstuffed with strongly-flavored fillings.

Wonderful breakfasts, all! Kim, your French toast looks particularly inviting. Kitchen sink omelet with buttered multi-grain toast. Curry powder and five-spice powder mixed with the eggs; ham, cheese, chopped tomato, and roasted chile paste for fillings.

Oh, goody. I propose a new rule – Erin does a foodblog every time she moves somewhere fascinating (and she always seems to move somewhere fascinating). Very tricky, posting your own teaser photos. You seem to have a lot of non-Chinese pantry staples. Do you tend to cook non-Chinese at home, and then eat out for the real stuff? Also, is Suzhou cuisine similar to that of Shanghai, or does Suzhou have different traditions? Can you get good, mouth-numbing Sichuan peppercorns in Suzhou? OK, I'll stop asking questions, but I am greatly looking forward to following along this week.

Pork fried rice this evening. We marinated sliced pork loin in fish sauce, black soy, shaoxing wine, chinkiang vinegar, chile oil, and sesame oil, and then stir-fried the pork separately. The usual fried rice ingredients (jasmine rice, garlic, roasted chile paste, fish sauce, eggs, and chopped scallions), plus we tossed some leftover cabbage salad into the wok. The pork turned out particularly tender and flavorful tonight.

Indian, Thai, Vietnamese, Mexican, I could be happy with any and all. None were much in evidence at home (except for an occasional curried something), but the DC burbs had an abundance of good, cheap international restaurants but a bicycle ride away.